


'And the Greatest of These Is...'

by abaddon (nothingbutfic)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 10:51:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12505744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingbutfic/pseuds/abaddon
Summary: It is far easier to stay true when you are the only one left. [Harry/Draco, post-War, AU.]





	'And the Greatest of These Is...'

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted between OoTP and HBP and now completely non-compliant.

Draco Malfoy knows he's a coward. This has been ingrained into him by his father's death and mother's exile, the fall of Voldemort and the capture of all remaining Death Eaters.

Five years on, and the Mark still hasn't faded. It glares at him from skin marked and dirty and pale, and Draco glares back, as he does with all inconvenient things he can't change. It is the Mark which keeps him here, fearful and rabid, bound to a dream when all others who followed it have passed into death and history. He believes in the dream; he still has faith in his own purity, but the dream has died, and Draco spends his days writing out the story of its fall in a little scrapbook in the hut he now calls a home.

He's never been especially good at telling stories, but the Mark crackles and burns under his skin, and drives him further and further on, into hunger and madness and the past. Regret has no hold on him now; the pages are filled with a vindication of all crimes he committed, a justification of every betrayal and hurt. In his eyes, Draco Malfoy was a saint, should have been a saint, and if they had won like they were supposed to, he would be by now.

He can't remember a time he wasn't hungry, and personal hygiene is not exactly his most important consideration nowadays. But he does have to eat, and one morning - it could have been a Tuesday in April or a Friday in December - Draco wouldn't have noticed the difference, even if there was snow and it was two feet deep - he goes out to make his semi-regular run off to a farm nearby that provides him with eggs and the occassional chicken. Not that the farmers knows he's doing the providing, but that's what peasants are for, and Draco is no peasant.

When he gets back to the hut, Harry Potter is sitting in his rickety old chair one leg folded over one another, his nose buried deep in the book he holds in one hand. 

Draco's scrapbook. The sight of it makes Draco seeth and rage in ways which few things could nowadays, but then nowadays his side of the story is the only thing he has.

"Nu-huh," Potter tells him, polite and ever so patronising, snapping the book shut and holding it out behind his own head when Draco surges towards him to get it back. Draco's taunted first years many times over in this exact way, but if you asked him right now, he'd have completely forgotten he did. "That's evidence, Malfoy. Can't be interfering with evidence." 

Evidence doesn't even make Draco stop, not evidence or the associations that go with it, like arrest and trial and guilt and execution, and he flails madly, hands outstretched to get the book back. "Give it! It's mine, Potter!"

"Do you really believe all this?" Potter asks, lofty and contemptuous as he holds Draco at bay with one hand, and looks through the book with the other. "I mean, I've heard some tall tales in my time, but this is...almost a fucking work of art."

He slips the book into a back pocket, and looks at him, expecting an answer.

"My truth is just as valid as anyone else's, Potter," Draco snarls, because there's nothing more he can do besides rant and rage, and it is something he does rather well. "Besides, if I hadn't done what I did, would you really have hated Voldemort so personally?"

"You really expect people to thank you for pushing me to win the War?" Potter is openly contemptuous now.

"No, because most people can't see what's in front of their faces." That much is true and it's doubly true of Draco, if he but knew it. He's smirking now, angry and just as contemptuous of Potter as Potter is of him, acting like he has the upper hand here, and maybe he has. "After all, there is only power and those too weak to-"

Draco could almost chuckle at the sudden blank rage that came over Potter's face as he said that, although getting slammed up against the back wall and having fingers around his throat is somewhat offense to his sense of humour.

"I never wanted to hear you say that," Potter snarls at him, spittle flying from lips, and gives his neck one last squeeze before letting him go and turning his back on him. "Not ever."

Draco's first impulse, amazingly, isn't to think of how he could stick a knife between Potter's shoulderblades and try to run. "We don't get always get what we want," he murmurs quietly and firm and hard, and it's as much insult as it is apology.

"We don't." Potter's shoulder sag, and when he turns back, his wand is raised, and he binds Draco's wrists behind, calm and implacable as Justice herself as he drags Draco out to the ring of Aurors that surround his hut.

"Fuck you," Draco snarls when they're through the door, and just keeps repeating himself, over and over again. "Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you."

Harry steps around him because he's no threat, and meets Draco's words with a backhand across his face that makes Draco's ears ring, his eyes see stars and the copper tang of blood seep into his mouth from a cut lip.

"Tried that, didn't we?" and he gazes around the circle of Aurors like he expects one of them to make a smart remark, like they're his enemy here and not Draco. "Wasn't too successful."

Nobody speaks, though, and Draco feels a sudden surge of pride that he can still rile Potter after all this time, that he can get Potter's blood pounding in a way he never could much at school, and all because of love. There's a not very gentle push at the small of his back, and Draco almost stumbles while the Aurors break formation and start striding off in file, with their prisoner and trophy in the middle.

He's being lead away to the slaughter, to a small dim cell and a glass of hemlock, as all great men are, and Draco recognises his greatness because they want him dead and he finally is a threat. That is the way his father died; this is the way he will die. The book in Potter's pocket is his confession, although he doesn't regard it as such, and when asked to recant, he will refuse, proud and stiff and smug because Draco Malfoy has betrayed every cause, forsaken every belief, broken every trust ever placed in him save this one. He broke Harry's heart, and his own in the process; fled the final battle because he didn't want to die, but now he shall stay true to this last great hope, because even Draco has to believe in something, and these beliefs give him power, and Draco has never wanted to be too weak to accept power, and it is far easier to stay true when you are the only one left.


End file.
